A Comparison of Rereading Benefits in First and Second Language Reading

Abstract

Text comprehension models in first and second language reading research posit that slow word recognition inhibits reading speed and decreases comprehension. To investigate the role of word recognition in reading, 2 experiments examined rereading benefits in participants’ first and second languages using scrambled and normal versions of English and Spanish texts. Native English speakers with intermediate (Experiment 1) or advanced (Experiment 2) Spanish skills demonstrated word‐ and text‐level transfer in both English and Spanish. However, advanced Spanish readers did not exhibit word‐level transfer when reading simple Spanish texts. These results suggest that fluent reading may be strongly influenced not just by word recognition, but also by text difficulty relative to reader skill, as well as other factors.